Research was undertaken to determine whether demographic characteristics of individual travelers could be derived from travel pattern information when no information about the individual was available. This question is relevant in the context of anonymously collected travel information, such as cell phone traces, when used for travel demand modeling. Determining the demographics of a traveler from such data could partially obviate the need for large-scale collection of travel survey data, depending on the purpose for which the data were to be used. This research complements methodologies used to identify activity stops, purposes, and mode types from raw trace data and presumes that such methods exist and are available. The paper documents the development of procedures for taking raw activity streams estimated from GPS trace data and converting these into activity travel pattern characteristics that are then combined with basic land use information and used to estimate various models of demographic characteristics. The work status, education level, age, and license possession of individuals and the presence of children in their households were all estimated successfully with substantial increases in performance versus null model expectations for both training and test data sets. The gender, household size, and number of vehicles proved more difficult to estimate, and performance was lower on the test data set; these aspects indicate overfitting in these models. Overall, the demographic models appear to have potential for characterizing anonymous data streams, which could extend the usability and applicability of such data sources to the travel demand context.
Proximity-based visualization of movement trace data
